Mississippi Today
Hospitals limit pediatric dentists’ access for procedures that require anesthesia
Two hospitals in south Mississippi have limited local pediatric dentists’ access to their facilities, potentially preventing hundreds of kids from receiving necessary dental care, according to one dentist.
Though the hospitals — Merit Health Wesley and Forrest General Hospital — are located in Hattiesburg, experts say this is an issue happening throughout the state and around the country.
In Mississippi, where over half of the adult population has had one or more permanent teeth removed because of gum disease or tooth decay, the effects of limiting pediatric dentists’ access to hospitals where they can safely put children to sleep for procedures could be devastating.
And one solution recently adopted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hasn’t yet been implemented in Mississippi.
In order for young children or children with special needs to tolerate dental procedures, most dentists agree that at least moderately sedating them is necessary, said Dr. Huel Harris, who’s been practicing pediatric dentistry in Hattiesburg for nearly four decades. However, it’s not easy — or always safe — to do in an office setting.
But after Merit Wesley and Forrest General decided to limit access to their operating rooms, a decision Harris suspects can be traced back to low reimbursement rates the hospitals receive from Medicaid, he and other pediatric dentists in the area have no safe way to put patients to sleep.
Harris was previously seeing about 40 kids a month for procedures that necessitated the use of an operating room and even had a standing weekly block at Forrest General for decades, where an anesthesiologist or nurse anesthetist sedated his patients.
Now, he’s not allowed to see any patients at Merit Wesley, and only about three patients every few months at Forrest General.
“If you look at myself and my other fellow pediatric dentists in the Hattiesburg area, we probably treated between 1,500 to 2,000 kids last year,” he said. “They now will not have a way to get the stuff done.”
He’s concerned that hospitals closing their doors to dentists could result in riskier situations for pediatric patients — or no care at all.
Current regulations say with enough training, dentists can sedate patients to a certain degree. But they cannot put patients to sleep.
Harris was told that Forrest General needed the space for “more necessary things,” he said.
In a statement provided to Mississippi Today, a Forrest General spokesperson said the hospital would be providing one day a month for pediatric dental cases. She refused to answer further questions.
Spokespeople from Merit Wesley said the hospital was prioritizing its resources on cardiac, orthopedic and bariatric surgery as well as breast and gastrointestinal cancer removal, citing limited availability of surgical suites and staffing.
But according to Harris, the hospitals’ reasoning is rooted in money.
Harris’ patients are predominantly insured by Medicaid. When a dental procedure is performed in a hospital setting, hospitals submit a facility charge for use of their operating room, and anesthesiologists submit a separate charge for their service.
Medicaid on average reimburses dental procedures at low rates compared to other medical procedures. Generally, Medicaid’s reimbursement to dentists for procedures they perform only covers about 30% of the procedure cost.
Matt Westerfield, spokesperson for the state Medicaid agency, said the department will explore whether it should adopt a new dental billing and payment system that would pay more for hospital dental operating room cases requiring general anesthesia with the hopes of increasing payments to facilities.
Though private insurers and state Medicaid divisions across the country are not required to recognize this new system, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry encourages it.
“The optimal oral health of all children needs to be a priority in all states,” the statement from the organization reads. “Operating room access for dental care is a pervasive issue across the country, in part due to costs to facilities and lack of reimbursement. This restricted access impacts both the oral and overall health of vulnerable children, as well as limits potential treatment options.”
Denny Hydrick, the executive director of the Mississippi State Board of Dental Examiners, declined to “speculate” regarding whether pediatric dentists need hospital space to perform operations and said he had not heard of this issue affecting other parts of the state.
Members of the Mississippi Academy of Pediatric Dentistry executive board either could not be reached or declined to be interviewed. Other Hattiesburg-area pediatric dentists followed suit — one mentioned hopes that the issue would be worked out among the involved entities.
No matter how potent, pediatric dental anesthesia and sedation largely requires special permitting.
In Mississippi, there are three levels of permits. A Class 3 permit allows dentists to lightly sedate patients. They’re completely awake but slightly subdued through laughing gas, or nitrous oxide, combined with anti-anxiety drugs like Valium. The Class 2 permit allows dentists to put patients in a moderately sedated state. In this state, a patient might drift off to sleep, but they’re breathing on their own and can respond to pain.
According to Dr. David Curtis, a longtime dentist who’s previously served on the Mississippi Academy of Pediatric Dentistry board and currently serves on the state dental examiners board, the sedation permitted in a Class 2 permit requires a great amount of skill.
But no dentist can acquire a Class 1 permit, which gives license to fully put patients to sleep in an unresponsive state. Only an oral surgeon or anesthesiologist can do that.
And in a hospital setting, trained anesthesia personnel can sedate patients and intervene during complications. That’s not the case in a dental office, Curtis said.
“If you get in over your head, which has happened around the country, you can get into serious trouble very, very fast,” he said. “If you’re in a hospital operating room, you have nurses and an anesthesiologist, and if you get into trouble they can get you out.”
A 2013 study found that 44 people under 21 have died nationwide from causes related to dental anesthesia between 1980 and 2011. A year after the study was published, a young girl died in Hawaii after undergoing sedation in a dental office.
And while anesthesiologists can be brought into dental offices to perform the sedation, that’s not always an option, Harris said — there’s a shortage of health care professionals nationwide, and it can be expensive.
Even oral surgeons can be hesitant to put people to sleep in their offices, Harris said, and when they do, they prefer to have a nurse anesthetist present.
He said the biggest difference between sedating adults and children is size. The larger someone is, the easier it is to find the right dose, he said.
“When someone is very small, the dose difference can be critical,” Harris said.
Curtis said while some dentists are comfortable moderately sedating patients in their offices, he’s not.
“There’s never been any question about whether dentists can do what they’re trained to do,” he said. “What comes into question is … if you get in over your head, you’re in trouble. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it’s tragic.”
Research shows that low-income people are more likely to have poor oral health. That’s why in Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, the consequences of limiting pediatric dentists’ access to operating rooms could be especially dire, Harris said.
During his 35-year career, Curtis said operating rooms have been readily available up until a few months ago. Since then, nearly every week he hears of another Mississippi hospital cutting access, he said.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and it’s a problem everywhere,” Curtis said. “Not just in Mississippi, but across the nation.”
Harris said many of his young patients need extensive work — including crowns, fillings and extractions — to mitigate severe dental disease.
Left untreated, severe dental issues in kids can turn into abscesses and create long-lasting issues. The next best solution is sending kids to oral surgeons, which Harris said he’s already started doing. However, that’ll likely result in kids getting their teeth pulled instead of getting restorative treatments like crowns.
“That’s going to snowball, and they may get overwhelmed,” Harris said. “We’ll just be kicking the can down the road.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center has acquired Canton-based Merit Health Madison and is preparing to move a pediatric clinic to Madison, continuing a trend of moving services to Jackson’s suburbs.
The 67-bed hospital, now called UMMC Madison, will provide a wide range of community hospital services, including emergency services, medical-surgical care, intensive care, cardiology, neurology, general surgery and radiology services. It also will serve as a training site for medical students, and it plans to offer OB-GYN care in the future.
“As Mississippi’s only academic medical center, we must continue to be focused on our three-part mission to educate the next generation of health care providers, conduct impactful research and deliver accessible high-quality health care,” Dr. LouAnn Woodward, UMMC’s vice chancellor of health affairs, said in a statement. “Every decision we make is rooted in our mission.”
The new facility will help address space constraints at the medical center’s main campus in Jackson by freeing up hospital beds, imaging services and operating areas, said Dr. Alan Jones, associate vice chancellor for health affairs.
UMMC physicians have performed surgeries and other procedures at the hospital in Madison since 2019. UMMC became the full owner of the hospital May 1 after purchasing it from Franklin, Tennessee-based Community Health Systems.
The Batson Kids Clinic, which offers pediatric primary care, will move to the former Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine location in Madison. This space will allow the medical center to offer pediatric primary care and specialty services and resolve space issues that prevent the clinic from adding new providers, according to Institutions of Higher Learning board minutes.
A UMMC spokesperson did not respond to questions about the services that will be offered at the clinic or when it will begin accepting patients.
The Mississippi Center for Advanced Medicine, a pediatric subspecialty clinic, closed last year as a result of a settlement in a seven-year legal battle between the clinic and UMMC in a federal trade secrets lawsuit.
The changes come after the opening of UMMC’s Colony Park South clinic in Ridgeland in February. The clinic offers a range of specialty outpatient services, including surgical services. Another Ridgeland UMMC clinic, Colony Park North, will open in 2026.
The expansion of UMMC clinical services to Madison County has been criticized by state lawmakers and Jackson city leaders. The medical center does not need state approval to open new educational facilities. Critics say UMMC has used this exemption to locate facilities in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods outside Jackson while reducing services in the city.
UMMC did not respond to a request for comment about its movement of services to Madison County.
UMMC began removing clinical services this year from Jackson Medical Mall, which is in a majority-Black neighborhood with a high poverty rate. The medical center plans to reduce its square footage at the mall by about 75% in the next year.
The movement of health care services from Jackson to the suburbs is a “very troubling trend” that will make it more difficult for Jackson residents to access care, Democratic state Sen. John Horhn, who will become Jackson’s mayor July 1, previously told Mississippi Today.
Lawmakers sought to rein in UMMC’s expansion outside Jackson this year by passing a bill that would require the medical center to receive state approval before opening new educational medical facilities in areas other than the vicinity of its main campus and Jackson Medical Mall. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves vetoed the legislation, saying he opposed an unrelated provision in the bill.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post UMMC hospital madison county appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
The article presents a primarily factual report on UMMC’s expansion into Madison County, outlining the medical center’s services and strategic decisions while including critiques from Democratic leaders and local officials about the suburban shift. The inclusion of concerns over equity and access—highlighting that the expansion is occurring in wealthier, whiter suburbs at the expense of services in majority-Black, poorer neighborhoods—leans the piece toward a center-left perspective, emphasizing social justice and community impact. However, the article maintains a measured tone by presenting statements from UMMC representatives and government officials without overt editorializing, thus keeping the overall coverage grounded in balanced reporting with a slight progressive framing.
Nationally known comedian Rita Brent will host the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute’s “Medgar at 100” Concert on June 28.
Tickets go on sale Saturday, June 14, and can be ordered on the institute’s website.
The concert will take place at the Jackson Convention Complex and is the capstone event of the “Medgar at 100” Celebration. Organizers are calling the event “a cultural tribute and concert honoring the enduring legacy of Medgar Wiley Evers.”
“My father believed in the power of people coming together — not just in protest, but in joy and purpose, and my mother and father loved music,” said Reena Evers-Everette, executive director of the institute. “This evening is about honoring his legacy with soul, celebration, and a shared commitment to carry his work forward. Through music and unity, we are creating space for remembrance, resilience, and the rising voices of a new generation.”
In addition to Brent, other featured performers include: actress, comedian and singer Tisha Campbell; soul R&B powerhouse Leela James; and Grammy award-winning artist, actor, entrepreneur and philanthropist Q Parker and Friends.
Organizers said the concert is also “a call to action — a gathering rooted in remembrance, resistance, and renewal.”
Proceeds from the event will go to support the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute’s mission to “advance civic engagement, develop youth leadership, and continue the fight for justice in Mississippi and beyond.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Rita Brent, Q Parker headline 'Medgar at 100' Concert appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
This article presents a straightforward, factual report on the upcoming “Medgar at 100” concert honoring civil rights leader Medgar Wiley Evers. The tone is respectful and celebratory, focusing on the event’s cultural and community significance without expressing a political stance or ideological bias. It quotes organizers and highlights performers while emphasizing themes of remembrance, unity, and justice. The coverage remains neutral by reporting the event details and mission of the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute without editorializing or promoting a specific political viewpoint. Overall, it maintains balanced and informative reporting.
Residents at Chapel Ridge Apartments in Jackson are left wondering what to do next after months dealing with trash pileups, property theft and the possibility of water shutoffs due to the property owner skipping out on the bill.
On Sunday, Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley, city attorney Drew Martin and code enforcement officers discussed next steps for the complex, which, since April 30, has been without a property manager.
“How are you all cracking down on other possible fraudulent property managers around Jackson?” one woman asked Martin.
“ We don’t know they’re there until we know they’re there, and I know that’s a terrible answer, but I don’t personally have another one I’m aware of right now,” Martin said. “These individuals don’t seem to have owned another apartment complex in the Metro Jackson area, despite owning a whole bunch nationwide.”
Back in April, a letter was left on the door of the leasing office advising residents to not make rental payments until a new property manager arrives. The previous property managers are Lynd Management Group, a company based in San Antonio, Texas.
The complex has been under increased scrutiny after Chapel Ridge Apartments lost its solid waste contract mid-March due to months of nonpayment. The removal of dumpsters led to a portion of the parking lot turning into a dumping site, an influx of rodents and gnats, and an investigation by the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality. Local leaders pitched in to help remedy the situation, and in May, Waste Management provided two dumpsters for the complex.
However, the problems persisted. In May, JXN Water released the names of 15 apartment complexes that owe more than $100,000 in unpaid water fees. Chapel Ridge was on the list. JXN Water spokesperson Aisha Carson said via email that they are “pursuing legal options to address these large-scale delinquencies across several properties.”
“While no shutoffs are imminent at this time, we are evaluating each case based on legal feasibility and the need to balance enforcement with tenant protections. Our focus is on transparency and accountability, not disruption—but we will act when needed to ensure the integrity of the system,” Carson said.
And earlier this week, Chapel Ridge Apartments was declared a public nuisance. Martin said this gives the city of Jackson “the authority to come in, mow the grass and board up any of the units where people aren’t living.”
Martin said the situation is complicated, because the complex is owned by Chapel Ridge Apartments LLC. The limited liability corporation is owned by CRBM Realty Inc. and Crown Capital Holdings LLC, which are ultimately owned by Moshe “Mark” Silber. In April, Silber was sentenced to 30 months in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud affecting a financial institution. Earlier this month, both companies filed for bankruptcy in New Jersey.
Now, Martin said the main goal is to find someone who can manage the property.
“Somebody’s got to be able to collect rent from you,” Martin said. “They got to be able to pay the water. They got to be able to pay the garbage. They got to be able to pay for the lights to be on. They got to maintain the property, so that’s our goal is to put that in place.”
Chapel Ridge offers a rent scale based on household income. Those earning under 50% of the area median income — between $21,800 and $36,150 depending on household size — for example, pay $480 for a two-bedroom and $539 for a three-bedroom unit. Rent increases between $20 and $40 for those earning under 60% of the area median income.
Valarie Banks said that when she moved into Chapel Ridge nearly 13 years ago, it was a great community. The disabled mother and grandmother moved from West Jackson to the complex because it was neatly kept and quiet.
“It was beautiful. I saw a lot of kids out playing. There were people that were engaging you when you came out. They were eager to help,” Banks said. “ I hope that they could bring this place back to the way it once was.”
But after months of uncertainty, Banks is preparing to move. She said she’s not the only one.
“I have somewhere to go, but I’m just trying to get my money together so I can be able to handle the deposits and the bills that come after you move,” she said. “All of my doctors are around here close to me. In 12 years, I made this place home for me. … I’ve been stacking my rent, but it’s still not enough if I want to move this month.”
While she said she’s holding onto her rent payments for the time being, she realizes that many of her fellow residents may not be as lucky. Without someone to maintain the apartments, some residents are finding themselves without basic amenities.
“Some people are in dire straits, because they don’t have a stove or a fridge or the air conditioner,” she said. “Their stove went out, or the fridge went out, or they stole the air conditioner while you’re in the apartment.”
Banks isn’t the only one who is formulating a plan to leave. One woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said she’s been trying to save money to move, but she already has $354 wrapped up in a money order that she’s unable to pass off for her rent, due to the property manager’s recent departure.
“It really feels like an abandonment and just stressful to live where I’m living at right now. This just doesn’t happen. It just feels stressful. It doesn’t feel good at all,” she said.
She’s trying to remain optimistic, but as each day passes without someone to maintain the property, she’s losing hope.
“ I just hope that things get better some day, somehow, hopefully, because if not, more than likely I’m going to have to leave because I can only take so much,” she said. “I can’t continue to deal with this situation of hoping and wishing somebody comes, and they don’t.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The post Future uncertain for residents of abandoned south Jackson apartment complex appeared first on mississippitoday.org
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This article from *Mississippi Today* primarily focuses on the struggles of low-income residents at Chapel Ridge Apartments, emphasizing the human impact of property mismanagement, regulatory gaps, and systemic neglect. The piece maintains a factual tone, but it centers the voices of vulnerable tenants and local officials seeking accountability—hallmarks of a center-left perspective. While it does not overtly advocate for policy change, the narrative framing highlights social injustice and institutional failures, subtly aligning with progressive concerns about housing equity and corporate responsibility.
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